Consumers are increasingly using automated mechanisms to perform every day transactions. Kiosks exist to avoid enterprise personnel and lines. These automated kiosks allow consumers to perform transactions with an enterprise or agency with little to no human intervention.
Furthermore, the traditional definition of a kiosk has become blurred in recent years because transactions can be performed on consumer devices. That is, smart phones, tablets, and laptops are often used to perform transactions with enterprises. For the most part these transactions occur via an Internet connection with a website for an enterprise. However, in recent years more and more enterprises are permitting consumers to transact with the enterprises using the consumers' smart phones via Blue Tooth or Near Field Communication (NFC) to interact with systems of these enterprises while the consumers are in the retail store.
One industry that has experienced very little automation with respect to a kiosk-driven transaction is the restaurant industry. Major reasons for the lack of automation in the restaurant industry include: the variety of food choices available across the industry, the plethora of mechanisms used to order food across the industry; and the customized promotions that may exists at some establishments but not at others even when the establishments are part of the same fast food chain.
Restaurants by and large include websites for customers to order carry out but lack portable interfaces for ordering on site while at a restaurant on customer devices such as tablets and phones. Generally, a website interface designed for a laptop does not render well to smaller devices, such as phones and tablets. Some restaurants have spent a lot of time and money trying to customize interfaces and the associated workflow to permit onsite ordering via customer devices but heretofore with little to no success.
Moreover, the restaurant industry is ripe for automation since it is a service-intensive business that is fraught with human error and time delays that substantially impact the customer's perception of an establishment. Additionally, if the number of servers could be reduced and quality and timeliness of service improved, then the cost of eating out could be lowered and the customer's experience improved.